Aristotle Quotes
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Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
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The life of theoretical philosophy is the best and happiest a man can lead. Few men are capable of it and then only intermittently. For the rest there is a second-best way of life, that of moral virtue and practical wisdom.
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Practical life is not necessarily directed toward other people, as some think; and it is not the case that practical thoughts are only those which result from action for the sake of what ensues. On the contrary, much more practical are those mental activities and reflections which have their goal in themselves and take place for their own sake.
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Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because life is sweet and they are growing.
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If everything when it occupies an equal space is at rest, and if that which is in locomotion is always occupying such a space at any moment, the flying arrow is therefore motionless.
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Again, men in general desire the good, and not merely what their fathers had.
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Time past, even God is deprived of the power of recalling.
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As the pleasures of the body are the ones which we most often meet with, and as all men are capable of these, these have usurped the family title; and some men think these are the only pleasures that exist, because they are the only ones which they know.
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The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants.
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We must become just be doing just acts.
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A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.
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But for those that are equal to have an unequal share and those that are alike an unlike share is contrary to nature, and nothing contrary to nature is noble.
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In seeking for justice men seek for the mean or neutral, for the law is the mean. Again, customary laws have more weight, and relate to more important matters, than written laws, and a man may be a safer ruler than the written law, but not safer than the customary law.
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Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.
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There is a cropping-time in the races of men, as in the fruits of the field; and sometimes, if the stock be good, there springs up for a time a succession of splendid men; and then comes a period of barrenness.
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When a draco has eaten much fruit, it seeks the juice of the bitter lettuce; it has been seen to do this.
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The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
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The brave man, if he be compared with the coward, seems foolhardy; and, if with the foolhardy man, seems a coward.
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We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.
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Equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional; by the first I mean sameness of equality in number or size; by the second, equality of ratios.
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A democracy when put to the strain grows weak, and is supplanted by Oligarchy.
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Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.
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Music directly imitates the passions or states of the soul...when one listens to music that imitates a certain passion, he becomes imbued withthe same passion; and if over a long time he habitually listens to music that rouses ignoble passions, his whole character will be shaped to an ignoble form.
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Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.